Greg Jobin-Leeds develops conversations, with regular guest bloggers, on social movements, highly effective international educational practices, school leadership, youth organizing & participatory democracy. Greg is co-founder of the Schott Foundation for Public Education and Access Strategies Fund. A former high school teacher and teacher trainer, he is also a public school parent. Click here for his new blog.

11 Things you can do to support Occupy

1.Write an article or teach about Occupy.
2.Bring in an Occupy activist to talk about Occupy.
3.Show a clip from Democracy Now! or bring in Occupy Comix to your classroom or with a group of friends.
4.Ask students to research participatory democracy models and participatory budgetingaround the world or research about Occupy’s critique and goals and have a debate.
5.Visit an Occupy action or do a field trip to an Occupy (since there are few occupied spaces left, Occupy has shifted to actions and campaigns).
6. Send dollars to a local community group involved with Occupy or to Occupy Wall Street (add links to both)
7.Take your dollars out of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other huge corporate banks and put your money in credit unions (particularly federal credit unions). Let the big banks know why you are pulling your dollars out.
8. Start your own Occupy and invite friends and colleagues.
9. Occupy Wall Street has helped shift the language in our society. Now it is commonplace to talk about how 47% of the wealth is owned by the top 1%. Many commentators are challenging the idea that we are “broke” and that we need to cut programs of social uplift. 70% now believe in increasing taxes on the wealthy. We can invite conversations about capitalism and start disucsing them ourselves.
10. Occupy is not a protest. It is creating a space to start a real discussion of money and things not talked about. It is a conversation about egalitarian values and direct democracy. It is creating new models. Create democratic participatory spaces in your class, work, home or community. Explore these new futures. Usher them in wherever you are.
11. Occupy is calling for an end to the “stop and frisk policies” in schools in the poorest communities, especially communities of color. Kids feel their future has been stolen. It is not the future their parents and grandparents had. Create spaces in your school, work or community for kids and coworkers to talk about it.

What else can we do?

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